In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 05-1897

RUDITE PEDE,

Petitioner,

v.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES,

Respondent.

____________

Petition for Review of an Order

of the Board of Immigration Appeals

No. A75-822-118

____________

ARGUED JANUARY 4, 2006—DECIDED MARCH 24, 2006

____________

Before POSNER, EVANS, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

EVANS, Circuit Judge. Soon after arriving in the United

States from Latvia in 1997, Rudite Pede married Alexander

Mishulovich, a United States citizen, and applied for

adjustment of status. But several things stood in the way of

her becoming a permanent resident. She obtained her visa

for entry into this country by fraud and she presented a

phony passport in the name of Dace Mediniece upon arrival.

Also, not to skip an unusual detail, her husband

(Mishulovich) was a sex-slave trafficker (Latvian women

imported to work as “dancers” in Chicago nightclubs) with

whom Pede was in cahoots.

In 1999, Pede was convicted in federal district court

of conspiracy to commit visa fraud (18 U.S.C. §§ 371,
2 No. 05-1897

1546, and 2) and four counts of visa fraud for causing

women in Latvia to use false visas for entry into the United

States (18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 1546). Mishulovich was convicted of

these and additional crimes as part of the same scheme,

including bringing several Latvian women into the United

States and holding them in involuntary servitude.

Upon her conviction, Pede spent 9 months in prison and

was placed in removal proceedings. Given her conviction

and the fact that she wasn’t seeking any form of relief from

deportation, the proceeding would have been over quickly

except for one thing—Pede and Mishulovich moved to

reopen her earlier adjustment of status hearing (one she

missed in 1998) and the government had not gotten around

to deciding the motion. The general practice under such

circumstances is to stay the removal proceedings, see Matter

of Garcia, 16 I. & N. Dec. 653, 656-57 (BIA 1978); Hassan

v. INS, 110 F.3d 490, 492 (7th Cir. 1997), and that’s what

happened here—at least half a dozen times between

November 1999 and January 2004. Finally, the immigration

judge (“IJ”) decided that there was no sense in waiting any

longer. Even if the motion to reopen was granted, the IJ

reasoned, there was no way Pede could convince the

government to overlook her fraud conviction and grant her

request for adjustment of status. Refusing to allow another

continuance, the IJ ordered Pede removed.

Pede now argues that, by refusing to continue her case,

the IJ denied her the right to have her request for adjustment properly adjudicated. She points out that we deemed

such a refusal unacceptable in Subhan v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d

591, 594-95 (7th Cir. 2004). See also Benslimane v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 828, 832 (7th Cir. 2005) (“An immigration

judge cannot be permitted, by arbitrarily denying a motion

for a continuance without which the alien cannot establish

a ground on which Congress has determined that he is

eligible to seek to remain in this country, to thwart the

congressional design.”) (citations omitted). But in Subhan

the IJ gave no reason for denying the continuance; here, the
No. 05-1897 3

reason was clearly spelled out—the ultimate hopelessness

of Pede’s adjustment application. That’s a perfectly acceptable basis for the IJ’s exercise of discretion. See Garcia,

16 I. & N. Dec. at 656-57 (“It clearly would not be an abuse

of discretion for the immigration judge to summarily deny

a request for a continuance . . . upon his determination that

the visa petition is frivolous or that the adjustment application would be denied on statutory grounds or in the exercise

of discretion notwithstanding the approval of the petition.”).

Pede also argues that the IJ improperly failed to notify

her of her eligibility to apply for voluntary departure,

withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention

Against Torture. See 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11(a)(2) (“The immigration judge shall inform the alien of his or her apparent

eligibility to apply for any of the benefits enumerated in

this chapter and shall afford the alien an opportunity to

make application during the hearing.”); Asani v. INS,

154 F.3d 719, 727 (7th Cir. 1998). She does not argue,

however, that she is in fact eligible for any of those forms of

relief. The IJ made a preliminary finding that she was not,

and Pede’s attorney made no objection. There is no harm in

failing to notify an alien of relief for which she is ineligible.

The petition for review is DENIED.

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—3-24-06